Chapter 310: Interlude: Nagisa
Kyouka stood over him, chest heaving, sweat dripping off her chin and mixing with the blood staining her face. Her arms felt like molten lead, every muscle screaming, but she didn’t let her grip loosen.
Satoshi tried to lift himself, clawing at the dirt with stumps, his head hanging by tendons, voice bubbling out.
“N-No…! Don’t— don’t… do this…! FUCK—!”
Kyouka drew in a deep breath—haa…—and stepped forward. Her blade glinted red with his blood as she swung it around behind his dangling head.
One clean motion—no hesitation. There was no pity.
The blade slit clean across his already torn throat, slicing the last threads of flesh.
Satoshi’s head fell free, rolling across the blood-slick ground and landing with a thud. His eyes, frozen wide in disbelief and rage, stared up at nothing.
His body twitched once… then fell still.
For a moment, all that remained was the heavy sound of Kyouka’s breathing—haa… haa…—and the drip-drip of blood from her blade.
She stood there, chest heaving, looking down at the body of the demon jester who had once seemed unstoppable.
And then, slowly, she let out the breath she’d been holding.
It was over. She had won.
Yuzuha looked at her niece, her lips curled into that slow, poisonous smirk that dug like a blade into old wounds.
Nagisa stood there, transformed fully into her true form with her skin burning in a deep, smoldering red that shimmered almost like living embers. Her frame had grown taller, bulkier, with every muscle tense and corded with raw power. She looked, without question, like an Oni born for war.
Oni. The demons of raw, unyielding might. They were beings whose very existence turned battlefields into splintered ruins. Their fists alone carried force that could shatter stone walls, and it was no wonder why countless factions had tried to hunt them down and enslave them.
But even among those fearsome creatures, Nagisa stood apart.
Ordinary Oni bore two great horns that rose from either side of their foreheads, and their size dwarfed most demons—towering anywhere between 2.5 to 4 meters, built like living battering rams. Their skin carried a deeper, darker maroon, as if blood had soaked into every pore.
But Nagisa… she was different in ways that cut deeper than appearance.
She had only a single horn, sharp and proud, jutting from the center of her forehead rather than a pair. Her skin didn’t burn with that same blood-maroon hue and instead, it smoldered in a darker orange, almost like iron pulled from a forge. And she wasn’t colossal as she only stood around 1.8 meters, barely half a meter taller than her human form.
A reminder of what set her apart, and what had once been called a flaw.
“Fufufu~ You look so damn foolish, don’t you?” Yuzuha’s voice dripped mockery, every syllable as heavy as venom. Her golden eyes gleamed down at her niece, amusement dancing cruelly in them. “What exactly are you trying to prove, standing there like that?”
At her full height, Yuzuha towered at 2.7 meters, looking down from above like a bored queen eyeing a broken toy. “You look rather stupid. Unlike me… who’s still so very… beautiful…” Her words trailed off, almost savoring the last syllable.
Unlike Nagisa’s raw, monstrous form, Yuzuha’s shape clung to an unsettling beauty. Her crimson skin didn’t harden into rough, battle-scarred muscle, but stretched smooth over curves that still spoke of lewd allure. She looked less like an Oni bred for slaughter, more like a demoness sculpted to tempt, to rule, as well as to destroy with a word instead of a blow.
“Yuzuha…” Nagisa’s voice cracked low in her chest, like molten rock grinding against itself. A rumble thick with rage that had been building, buried deep under scars older than most could remember. “You’re going to pay… for everything you did…”
And that rage—dark and blistering—had roots tangled decades deep in betrayal.
Nagisa had been born the daughter of a high-ranking Oni clan. Their home lay at the far edge of Hell itself.
It was a place so remote and brutal that even demons of great power rarely dared to cross its borders.
In that hidden fortress, Nagisa had been raised for a single destiny and that was to lead. In her clan, the seat of power wasn’t passed by blood alone, and certainly not limited to men. Often, it was the women who carried the title of leader, women whose strength and resolve had kept the clan alive for generations.
And Nagisa had been groomed for that future since the day she first learned to walk.
Among those who shaped her, no one meant more to her than her mother. Her mother’s words had taught her pride, her mother’s hand had guided her fist, and her mother’s embrace had calmed her fears.
But Nagisa had another teacher too—her aunt, Yuzuha.
Yuzuha had been her father’s older sister, bound to the family by blood and trusted by everyone. Especially Nagisa.
At first, Nagisa had loved her aunt fiercely—sometimes, she dared to think she was even closer to Yuzuha than to her own mother. Yuzuha had always seemed wise, strong, and her presence had been comforting as fire on a winter night.
But behind that calm, smiling mask, a hatred had festered.
A hatred so deep, it poisoned everything.
Yuzuha had grown to despise her own kind and her own blood. Power meant more to her than family, and she would cut through flesh and bone to get it.
She made a pact with a devil.
They were dark promises whispered in exchange for strength. And in the end, she offered up the only thing of worth she had left to trade and that was her clan.
Onis were living weapons. Entire factions had dreamed of bending them into chains, using them as unstoppable vanguards to crush rivals. And Yuzuha opened the gate and invited the wolves in.
The Oni clan’s location had always been a closely guarded secret, and it was hidden even from other high-ranking demons. But Yuzuha handed it over, every path, as well as every weakness laid bare.
It happened the night Nagisa turned twenty. She’d been wandering the forest that wrapped around their hidden home.
When she returned, her world was ash and screams.
She saw it all. Clanmates she had grown up with, their bodies burned beyond recognition. Others dragged in chains, heads bowed under the weight of defeat.
Her mother—her strong, unbreakable mother—shoved into a carriage, shackled like common livestock. Her father’s body nowhere in sight, but the blood trailing on the ground told enough.
The invaders weren’t ordinary. They moved with a precision that reeked of inside knowledge—like predators who knew exactly where to sink their teeth.
Desperate resistance met only slaughter. Her father died fighting. Her mother, too.
Nagisa herself was overpowered and captured. But not kept to fight.
Compared to her clanmates, Nagisa’s strength had always been different and smaller. Her destructive power fell short of the monsters they had been bred to be. So she wasn’t chained to become a soldier.
Dragged to an auction house thick with the stink of sweat and hopelessness—shouted bids echoing like hammers striking her pride.
And the one who claimed her wasn’t a stranger.
Her own blood. Her own teacher. Her own aunt.
She bought Nagisa for next to nothing—no one else even tried to bid to get her.
At first, Nagisa had actually felt happy.
She still had no idea at this point that it was Yuzuha who’d betrayed the entire clan, who had invited ruin right to their doorstep. To her, her aunt buying her felt like a small mercy in the middle of hell.
So she’d spoken, her voice shaking.
“T-Thank you…” she whispered.
But Yuzuha just started laughing. It was a cold, sharp laugh that spilled out like she couldn’t hold it back anymore.
To her, all of this… was funny. Cruel, but funny.
“I can’t believe you’re really this fucking dumb not to notice,” Yuzuha said, laughter still curling in her voice. Then she turned, her golden eyes narrowing as she looked straight at her niece, her smirk widening. “Or are you just pretending not to see it?”
“W-What are you saying…?” Nagisa’s words stumbled out, her face scrunching up with confusion and a growing sense of dread.
“There’s no way you’d be this fucking clueless,” Yuzuha went on, her tone twisting from mocking amusement to open spite. “You know what? I’ve always hated you. The fact they all revered you as some ‘unique’ little miracle pissed me off so fucking much… sometimes I wished you’d died before you were even born in your mother’s womb. But those idiots—no, those worthless creatures—never fucking saw the truth. They kept celebrating you… a freak, a failed product. A fucking defect. You were never like us. But still, they worshiped you. And me? They ignored.”
She leaned closer, her smirk stretching cruelly across her face, her voice dropping to an icy whisper.
“I was the one who killed your parents.”
“Why the fuck are you so surprised?” Yuzuha sneered. “Don’t act so fucking dense. You know damn well I was behind that attack. I’m the one who sold out the entire clan to the Fujikawa Faction.” Her words dripped satisfaction. “You know it already. You’re just refusing to acknowledge it.”
“T-There’s no way that I…” Nagisa’s voice faltered, cracking under the weight of horror.
“Stop being a pathetic freak and face reality,” Yuzuha hissed, the disgust twisting her expression. “I’m your enemy. Burn that into your skull. And listen up—” her voice took on a mocking sweetness, “the only reason I even bothered to buy your worthless ass was so I could see that pathetic look on your face when it finally sank in. That despair? That’s what I wanted to see.”
Her smirk widened one last time. “Now that I’ve seen it… you’re useless to me. Bye.”
She turned and walked away, leaving Nagisa alone.
Nagisa just dropped to her knees, the shock crashing into her like a wave that stole her breath.
Her thoughts spun out of control, crashing into each other, until everything inside her mind short-circuited under the weight of it all… and the darkness took her, pulling her into unconsciousness.